Reds (1981)

This is a three-hour homage to the Bolshevik revolution and tells the true life story of John Reed, a radical American journalist around the time of World War I.

This film begins in 1915 in Portland, Oregon, where Reed (Warren Beatty), budding radical and chronicler of Pancho Villa's Mexican uprising, makes the acquaintance of Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), proto-feminist and aspiring writer.

He and Louise become lovers amid the intellectual ferment of Greenwich Village and Provincetown, Massachussetts but her affair with the brilliant, melancholy Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson) cleaves them asunder.

Still, inspired by tumultuous events in Russia, they re-team for a mission to Moscow, where they rekindle their ardour and wind up storming the Winter Palace.

Meanwhile, back in the US, Reed composes "Ten Days That Shook the World" while Louise discovers her own formidable voice. But Reed's factional feuds within the American Socialist Party lead him back to Moscow, where disillusion and heartbreak lie in store.

This rather magisterial endeavour won director Warren Beatty the Best Director Oscar in 1982 and the film won two other Oscars.